And for my second blog tonight, I wanted to write up another little review of something from my collection: the Shout Factory releases of the three Japanese Transformers series.
For those who may not know, in 1987, Hasbro did a three episode miniseries that essentially ended Generation One as an animated property. However, in Japan, this miniseries was disregarded and instead Takara produced The Headmasters, a new series of thirty five episodes that, more or less, continued the story from the end of G1 Season 3, but used the characters and concepts in an entirely different way.
This was followed by Super-God Masterforce in 1988, which again used the majority of the characters released by Hasbro at the time, but with an even more radical change in its presentation: the vast majority of the characters were actually humans using the Transformer bodies to carry out the conflict (it also marks the first time that Japan would see Transformer figures released that did not get a release in America; Overlord and Metalhawk are the two characters from this series who had toys in Japan that did not carry over to America.)
Another re branding too place in 1989, as the franchise became known as Victory, which reversed the trend in the previous two series in that the majority of the characters seen in the show were exclusive to Japan (the only characters from America seen in the show were the Micromaster Rescue Patrol and the Decepticon Monster Pretenders (redesigned by having plastic dinosaur shells instead of rubber monster ones).
Various releases of the cartoon have occurred, but until recently, none of them were available in region 1. That changed last year when Shout Factory, having recently re-released both Generation One and Beast Wars, released The Headmasters on a four disc set in July, following up by releasing Masterforce on a five disc set in May and Victory on another four disc set in August. Each set features a newly translated sub of the episodes (which includes terminology and phrasing that wouldn't occur until ten or fifteen years later; various references to "sparks", "The Inferno" and "the Allspark" occur throughout,) with the characters retaining their American names where appropriate...and sometimes not, in the case of several characters from Masterforce, who are called their American name despite not being those characters (the Decepticon Headmaster Juniors are called their American names; ditto Lightfoot/Getaway), with a bonus feature of an art gallery of selected character models the sole extra on all three sets.
Now, the question is, should you own these sets? Well, if you're a hardcore Transformers fan, then the answer would be yes. It's a piece of history most fans aren't aware of, and are certainly worth checking out if you're interested. It's not exactly as thorough a release as their previous Transformer sets (Hasbro didn't want to release them at all, and it's only through negotiating with the companies who had already done so that Shout was able to release them in North America), but given everything, I personally love having them as part of my collection.
For those who may not know, in 1987, Hasbro did a three episode miniseries that essentially ended Generation One as an animated property. However, in Japan, this miniseries was disregarded and instead Takara produced The Headmasters, a new series of thirty five episodes that, more or less, continued the story from the end of G1 Season 3, but used the characters and concepts in an entirely different way.
This was followed by Super-God Masterforce in 1988, which again used the majority of the characters released by Hasbro at the time, but with an even more radical change in its presentation: the vast majority of the characters were actually humans using the Transformer bodies to carry out the conflict (it also marks the first time that Japan would see Transformer figures released that did not get a release in America; Overlord and Metalhawk are the two characters from this series who had toys in Japan that did not carry over to America.)
Another re branding too place in 1989, as the franchise became known as Victory, which reversed the trend in the previous two series in that the majority of the characters seen in the show were exclusive to Japan (the only characters from America seen in the show were the Micromaster Rescue Patrol and the Decepticon Monster Pretenders (redesigned by having plastic dinosaur shells instead of rubber monster ones).
Various releases of the cartoon have occurred, but until recently, none of them were available in region 1. That changed last year when Shout Factory, having recently re-released both Generation One and Beast Wars, released The Headmasters on a four disc set in July, following up by releasing Masterforce on a five disc set in May and Victory on another four disc set in August. Each set features a newly translated sub of the episodes (which includes terminology and phrasing that wouldn't occur until ten or fifteen years later; various references to "sparks", "The Inferno" and "the Allspark" occur throughout,) with the characters retaining their American names where appropriate...and sometimes not, in the case of several characters from Masterforce, who are called their American name despite not being those characters (the Decepticon Headmaster Juniors are called their American names; ditto Lightfoot/Getaway), with a bonus feature of an art gallery of selected character models the sole extra on all three sets.
Now, the question is, should you own these sets? Well, if you're a hardcore Transformers fan, then the answer would be yes. It's a piece of history most fans aren't aware of, and are certainly worth checking out if you're interested. It's not exactly as thorough a release as their previous Transformer sets (Hasbro didn't want to release them at all, and it's only through negotiating with the companies who had already done so that Shout was able to release them in North America), but given everything, I personally love having them as part of my collection.